Canada's First River Surf Park To Be Built North Of Whistler

Halfway between Whistler and Pemberton - a sleepy farming community 30 minutes north - lays a concrete waterway that many think has something to do with the power plant that it lays beside. In fact, it's what was supposed to be a world-class kayak facility, built by the developers of the plant to calm the fears of the local kayak population who were making a fuss about the loss of yet another naturally running river. But between infighting in the kayak community, and the less than stellar approach taken by the builders, what the community was left with was a kayak course deemed so dangerous that I have literally seen the thing filled with water just once in ten years. 

Seeing an opportunity where others see waste, Tyler Kraushar and several other Pemberton and Whistler locals have come up with the genius idea to turn the monstrosity into something that is pretty much the coolest thing ever ... a standing river wave surf park! By landscaping the underwater topography and creating a series of standing waves, the Pemberton Valley Surf organization is planning on creating something the likes of which we've never seen around these parts.

And holy fuck am I excited. Seriously, what took you guys so long to come up with this idea?!

With things just coming together as we speak and details being hard to come by, I got in touch with Tyler to get a bit more info. You can be sure we're going to be following this story as it develops and will sure as shit be there on opening day!
 

What exactly is "Pemberton Valley Surf"?

Pemberton Valley Surf Association is a non profit surf club we have formed to build a standing wave park at the existing Rutherford Kayak Park. Our intention is to complete as much of this project as we can on volunteer work, and build a cheap place for members to go and surf in our mountain/landlocked area. 

Where did the idea come from?

I logged onto facebook one day and someone had been posting videos of the wavegarden from spain, saying we should build one in Pemberton. I started to google manmade waves and found a bunch of different standing waves that had been built. The more I searched the more I found. Knowing we had the kayak park there that wasn't being used at all, the idea slipped came into my mind that we could build similar standing waves at an existing facility for a fraction of the cost of building something like the wavegarden. I started to share the idea online and discuss it with friends, a couple visits to the Kayak park and the momentum started to gain. The idea is still growing and we've got lots of plans. For now our focus is on building our first wave and making it as safe as possible, with hopefully a bunch of waves in the future. 

I think the main reason the kayak park failed is due to how technical and dangerous it was made. There are many stories i've heard from a lot of different people about mismanagement of the building, to no one being able to agree on the vision. I think their intent was good, the people in charge just wanted to build a double black diamond of sorts. I think the surf park will probably see a higher volume of use due to the fact that we are doing our best to build it for safety and making as friendly to as many people as possible. With the number of people in our area who participate in board sports, the enthusiasm for the idea has been great so far and I imagine once this is built we will quickly find we need to build more so we can actually all get some time on a wave! 

What needs to get done in order for this thing to become a reality?

A lot needs to be done. We are currently designing and planning our vision so that we can implement it successfully. We are going to have to do a bunch of construction for safety and to form the wave, but first we need to do some fundraising and get all the right partners involved. We are hoping to have our first fundraiser within the next month here and go forward from there, hopefully completing construction for next season sometime. The more people who get involved the better. The more fundraisers and awareness we have of the project the more we can accomplish in terms of quality and the number of waves we can build. 

What is the Timeline on the project? 

My personal goal is to see us operational in some capacity by the end of next summer at the latest, though our timeline is really limited by fundraising and getting things done. I don't think the goal is unrealistic in anyway, but you never know what might happen when trying to build these types of projects. I'll say we've done a ton of learning so far and we've got a lot more to learn. 

If you'd like to get involved check us out on FACEBOOK we will be posting everything we are doing here, meeting times ect. We'd love more people to come out and help out whether it's doing the construction, fundraising, creating awareness or any other good ideas we may not have even come up with yet. 

Thanks a lot for everyones support and we look forward to getting everyone stoked on this

Tyler Kraushar
President Pemberton Valley Surf